Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Dare to Encourage

Howdy…I’m being funny. I’m from NY, you know. How are you?
So, I want to talk today about encouraging others. People say things all the time, “Great job,
buddy,” “You really think on your toes,”
and so on. What about kids? You over exaggerate encouragement (with good
reason) on them, right?

But what about the disabled (crip) child…

I’m afraid my experience, growing up, wasn’t as affirming.

So, I have 2 brothers and 2 sisters. I’m 2nd in line, the oldest girl,
and the only one with CP. My sis right
under me (a year younger) was in baseball, ballet, karate, yeah, you get
it. All my sibs did something; you know,
parents put their kids in all sorts of stuff.
All that is good, but, oh, wait, there’s one more daughter. What does she do? Nothing.

She’s the “handicapped” one.

BTW, I do not like the connotation of that word.

So, I was never in sports or activities of Any
kind. Man, maybe that’s why I was
depressed. There is nothing wrong with
my mind-actually, I am of high intelligence-however, my physical movement is
slower than average, but, still, I was seen as ‘the one who’d do nothing with
her life’.

Yes, my mom has told me she didn’t think I’d move
out or do much of anything. Because I can’t
walk?! Pardon me, all, but wtf?

Recently, she’d told me that she wished people
would not have encouraged me as a child (“Joey, you can do anything/be anybody”)
because she could not imagine my life
being bright. After I was 12, my dad was
not around much, but maybe if at least one parent believed in me, then… Well, I
don’t know, but…

I graduated high school (even through the bullying
and other challenges I’d faced), graduated college, got my first novel
published and working on more. I have a
family… It made me think, though.
Everybody has something to offer-look at the challenges Helen Keller had
to conquer. She is one of my heroes!

Crip or not, encouragement is an amazing
thing. I’ll even go as far to say if my
child was deaf, blind, had an IQ of 50, whatever, there is something they know
over me. They are special-everybody is
special-but a little positivity Will carry them far.

A life-long advocate of people with disabilities, Cindy Kolbe shares her daughter's challenges with a new spinal cord injury after an accident, as well as her own experiences as a mother trying to help her family heal.

Let me introduce Nick Moreau, an up and coming lawyer. He has everything he could possibly want: money, rising power, a loving wife. He's living the American Dream. He's cut throat, balls to the wall in nature coupled with chiseled good looks...curly brown hair, deep, dark eyes, strong jaw line.